


Restless

by Snarklings



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-30
Updated: 2012-05-30
Packaged: 2017-11-06 08:05:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/416606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snarklings/pseuds/Snarklings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gendry makes it to the Wall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Restless

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kimberlee](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Kimberlee).



> A special thanks to Kimberlee (because she had this idea in the first place and because she is awesome and didn’t give up on me) and Kavi (for putting up with my anxiety and giving me suggestions and correcting some of my mistakes. You’re lovely, darling)

Gendry doesn’t dwell on the future or the past. He does what he can, takes nothing for granted and expects nothing from anyone. He isn’t called the Bull for nothing, he gives his all to whatever he does with the stubbornness to be the best, he could just as well have been a cook’s apprentice and he would have tried to be the best damn cook King’s Landing had ever seen. As it is, he beats out armour’s plates and helmets and even a few swords every once in a while and is grateful for what he has.

(one day, a man’s head is cut off, five children become orphans, a woman’s heart breaks and Master Mott decides he has tired of him and means to send him to the Wall. Gendry stops. Processes. Accepts. Moves forward.)

That’s when Arry happens. Arry, Lumpyhead, boy. Arya. Arya. He says in his head. He is the only one who knows; the only one she has trusted her secret with.

(and maybe he feels somewhat important for the first time in his life and maybe he does think about the future for a second before shaking his head and looking at his feet)

***

Gendry has learned to accept the cards life has dealt him in all of his fifteen years with nothing more than a quick glance backwards and determination to make the best of it. He is and has been many things, a bastard, an orphan, an armourer’s apprentice, none of which were his choice, mind you, but all of them made the man he was shaping himself to be. He embraces his circumstances, makes armour of them and never complains.

But when he meets Arya, something changes inside of him. It’s not only that he does things he would never have done in the past, like risking his life and recklessly leaving a comfortable position in a forge. He wants to be better, he learns and tries and wishes and dreams.

(he still doesn’t make his own choices, because he can never, ever say no to her, but it’s different and he doesn’t really mind it at all)

***

Harrenhal is left behind with its ghosts and leeches and the journey to Winterfell is an arduous one. Home calls to Arya. Arya calls to Gendry. Hot Pie dreams of hot pies.

(they find their strength in empty things. The ghost of Harrenhal is with them. Winterfell is burned to the ground. Arya forgets herself. There are no hot pies to be found)

***

There’s something that breaks inside of her as they see the burnt remains of what once was Winterfell. She doesn’t cry or scream or wallow, but Gendry can see it in the way her eyes widen and close for one second too long.

(he has never hurt so much just by seeing someone else’s pain)

Arya steels herself and whatever it was that he saw in her stormy grey eyes is gone.

“Leave”. She says very quietly.

He never had a choice to begin with.

(later, he’ll regret listening to her. Regret leaving her alone even for a few seconds. But that is later.)

***

“What are we going to do now?” Hot Pie asks.

“We wait for her”.

“No. I mean. With our lives”.

“We wait for her”.

(I. Gendry means I.)

***

Arya never comes back.

(later, as they look for her in the neighbouring villages, they are told the Hound was seen with a little boy of ten heading south)

***

“What are we going to do now?”

He knows they can’t wait forever.

(he could have. Would have had it not been for the rumours. A wedding. Blood and madness and wolves and… he can’t afford to think about it)

Gendry was never good at making choices, but he was also never one to stand about, so he does what they set out to do when they left King’s Landing in the first place.

“We go to the Wall”.

(he has to keep moving. He can’t stop now, or else he fears he may never get up again)

***

It’s already a long journey, but the silence makes it that much longer.

Hot Pie cries at night and Gendry is almost grateful for the sound, though his own eyes remain dry.

(he can’t afford himself to feel, can’t process the loss)

The words hang unsaid between them during the day; he fears they will slip out of his mouth if he isn’t careful so he keeps his lips shut tight.

But his thoughts. His thoughts are another matter altogether.

(Dead. Dead. Dead. Arya. Arya. Arya

Arya.)

***

“We are a smith short.”

“I’m no smith, m’lord, just an apprentice”.

The Lord Commander eyes him for a second. “You really have no idea how things work around here, do you”.

It’s not a question.

***

In another time, another life, he would have thought the Wall a good a place as any. He would’ve gotten to work without a second thought and just been grateful for having food and shelter.

But that was then and this is now.

And now he doesn’t feel all that grateful. There’s just anger and bitterness and violence.

Which is good, especially when you have Others to worry about and breastplates to beat out and a Lord Commander to spar with.

He is not sure how that came to be, but he is glad for it as he charges at the other man with all his might. He is not the best at swordplay, but he is learning. His sheer brutal strength almost makes up for his lack of skill.

(he would like to think that years and years in a forge are the only reason for his ferociousness, but he knows better)

***

Lord Commander Snow is six-and-ten, the same age as Gendry, but not. Not really.

He is six and ten and thirty and one hundred years old all at once.

(this reminds him of her even more than the physical resemblance, and something lodges in his throat when the thought crosses his mind. He charges)

Sometimes he wants to talk. Feels that they both have a lot to say, but words are traitorous things and he can’t afford to share his just yet.

(he charges)

‘So this is how you deal?’ he hears her voice in his head. ‘Meet, charge mindlessly; beat each other to a pulp, leave. That is stupid’.

(he charges)

He remembers who he used to be. Stop. Process. Accept. Move on.

Stop. Process. Accept. Move on.

Stop. Process. Accept. Move on.

(he charges somewhere between ‘stop’ and ‘process’)

***

Gendry tries to pinpoint the exact moment when he became what he is now. Tries to understand what has become of him, what he was before and what he wants to be from now on.

Before her, those thoughts would never have crossed his mind, but now… He’s suddenly become aware of himself, of his station in life, of what a future could hold.

(it could have held a family and sharing and a forge somewhere and just enough money to survive or maybe wildness and adventure or even maybe living in the woods with wolves, it wouldn’t matter if he had her)

But she’s come and gone and there’s only a bitter aftertaste in his mouth.

***

The first time they talk, they are both drunk.

“I like you, Waters”, the Lord Commander as they stumble out of the forge. “You’re angry. So angry. I’m angry, too, you know”.

Had he not been drunk, had he cared about stations at the moment, he would just have muttered a quiet `yes, m’lord’ and let it be. As it is, he can’t contain himself. “I’m not your play thing. I’m not here so you can beat the anger out of you.”

“Oh, well, the same goes for you”.

Gendry offers his hand and both men almost stumble to the ground as they try to shake hands.

“I’m glad this is settled, then”.

(this conversation won’t be remembered in the morning. They continue using each other)

***

Hot Pie always gives him extra bacon.

“You don’t have to do this”, Gendry protests.

“You look like a stick with skin”, Hot Pie says, happily digging in to his own food.

“You have enough meat in you for both of us”, Gendry bites back.

Hot Pie frowns. “I’m not trying to make you fat” he stops eating for a moment to look at Gendry. “Don’t food make you happier? It always cheers me up”.

Gendry looks up from his bacon. “What?”

“I mean”, Hot Pie struggles to find the right words. “Sometimes there’s this… hole? It makes me all sad and everything. And then food fills the hole and then I don’t feel so empty anymore”.

Gendry actually laughs for the first time since he can remember.

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard”.

(and it isn’t even really funny, but there’s the fact that even Hot Pie, who’s always and forever Hot Pie, can see the emptiness in him and that’s a bit sad, but it’s mostly amusing and Gendry has to laugh at the irony of it all)

***

“You will be saying your vows soon”, Lord Commander Snow says one day, out of the blue.

“Yes, m’lord”.

“Don’t call me m’lord”, the Commander says scowling.

(it’s a stab to his chest)

“So”, he continues when it becomes clear Gendry isn’t about to answer. “will you take them?”

It’s Gendry’s turn to scowl. “Of course I will.”

Snow turns to him then, contemplates his profile. “You do have a choice, you know”.

(no, he didn’t know. He never knew what it was like, having a choice, being master of his own destiny. He barely knows how to feel)

Gendry stops. Processes.

“I have”, he struggles to find the right word, “loyalties. Elsewhere”.

“We all do”, Jon Snow says clasping his shoulder. “And now is the time to decide if you are willing to let them go”.

(he wants to, desperately, to let go, move on, be the person he once was)

“M’lord-“

“Don’t call-“

“Snow. Snow, have you. I mean. Have you ever loved someone you weren’t supposed to?”

A shadow crosses Jon’s face and Gendry has his answer. “I don’t think-“

“It’s a ghost”, he blurts out before he can stop himself. “I-I have to let it go but I don’t know if I can. It haunts my every thought; it’s made me who I am now. It’ll be part of me for as long as I live”.

(the words slip from his lips before he can think them through and they hang in the air between them, course and unrefined but true)

***

(here’s what Jon doesn’t say: yes. yes. more than myself, more than I could even understand, but it was over before it properly began and now she’s gone and all the mysteries in her eyes will remain forever undisclosed and, god, it’s like missing something that was never mine to begin with, but I never wanted her to be mine, she wasn’t made for belonging to anyone, she was free and wild and dangerous and beautiful.

here’s what Jon doesn’t know: there’s duty to one’s word and duty to one’s heart and his Stark blood is constantly at odds with his Targaryen soul and until he understands that he can never find peace)

***

Gendry has a choice, for once.

He can live his life in black, protect the realm and live a lonely life on the Wall for the rest of his days.

Or he can leave, find some nice country girl, work on a forge, have children, try to raise them well and die knowing he never felt anything even remotely passionate for any of it.

He has a choice, but neither one is the one he wants.

(he realises it was never a choice to begin with. She will haunt him wherever he goes and in a pathetic, weak way he is grateful for it)

***

It’s actually something Hot Pie says that changes everything.

“Arya must be somewhere hot. Like Dorne or Mander or somewhere really strange like Pentos.”

Gendry stares.

“What you think, Gendry? I bet she is.”

***

The fact remains that her death was never confirmed.

Gendry isn’t a superstitious person or one to believe in instincts and feelings; he’s too practical for that. But he was never quite himself when it came to her, so he can’t help the little seed of hope that plants itself in his chest.

(if she had died, you would have known exactly the moment when it happened. You would have known deep in your bones)

***

“You’re getting better”, Lord Commander Snow comments one day as he catches Gendry in the ribs with the flat of the sword.

“M’lord has a weird concept of getting better”, Gendry says wincing.

“Do. Not. Call. Me. M’lord”, Jon says punctuating each word with a quick slash of his sword.

(do not call me m’lady. Strangely enough, the memory is sweeter than he would have expected. Maybe he is getting better after all)

“I’m not taking the black”, he tells Jon once they are finished.

There is a bitter smile in the other man’s face. “I know”.

(she is his choice and he will go to the ends of the world to find her)


End file.
